


A Force That Must Be Free

by skitzofreak



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, F/M, M/M, Telepathy, rated for language and some violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 21:18:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15938495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: “What they need,” Chirrut says into the gentle peace of the courtyard of the great Temple of Kyber, and Baze knows what’s coming by the sly stretch of Chirrut’s smile, “are guardians.”“Lazy joke,” Baze tells him pointedly.Another thoughtful tap of the staff end against the dirt, and then Chirrut spins it again around his wrist, so pleased with himself already that he does not even hear the acolyte quietly applaud. “But a true one.”Baze shakes his head and grabs the staff, his fingers conveniently wrapping around Chirrut’s hand as he does. “You figured out how to meet them on purpose yet?”Chirrut’s smile wanes but his confidence does not. “Soon,” he promises. “We shall.”----A Rogue One/Sense8 fusion.





	A Force That Must Be Free

**Author's Note:**

> "Look, love is not something we wind up, something we set or control. Love is just like art: a force that comes into our lives without any rules, expectations or limitations. Love, like art, must always be free." — Hernando, _Sense8_

Chirrut notices first, of course, but it’s Baze who puts it all together. When he explains it to Chirrut, his  _sharik_ taps his staff thoughtfully against the hard-packed Jedhan dirt for a long moment, and then nods. It makes perfect sense that  _sharikesh_ would be joined through the Force in more ways than one, and though neither of them know anything of such bonds extending out through time and space to unknown strangers, well, if the Force wills it, then it must be so. Baze rolls his eyes at that last comment, but does not argue. It does make sense, in some ways. Chirrut has always heard more than others. Or at least, he has always heard more than anyone ever gave him credit. Poor blind boy, stumbling his way through the wide galaxy, nothing but a humble stick in hand to navigate the pitfalls.

“No,” Baze grunts irritably, unwilling to let Chirrut get away with that much. He smacks away the end of that ‘humble stick’ from his ribs, “You don’t hear more, you just listen better.”

“I see no difference.” Chirrut smiles brightly, “For example, I can hear you groaning at that joke, even though you have made no sound.”

“You do not have magical hearing,” Baze is firm on this point. He pauses, glowers at an acolyte who has been staring at Chirrut’s walking staff for several seconds, and as she blushes and turns back to her duties in the garden, Baze adds reluctantly. “I grant the second thing, though.”

Chirrut prods him in the ribs again, gently, and the humor in his tone takes on a faint note of what Baze might call uncertainty if he didn’t know better. “That I walk alone, guided and defended only by my humble stick?”

“No,” Baze grunts again, and catches the staff in one rough hand. “The thing about people underestimating you.”

Chirrut laughs, holds up his free hand in a gesture of peace, and when Baze releases the staff, he cleverly flips it around his wrist in a complicated gesture and settles it more comfortably in his hand. The staring acolyte’s eyes widen. Chirrut flips the staff again, this time a move so complex it seems as if his deft brown hands pass straight through the polished reinforced wood. The acolyte gasps softly. Chirrut’s smile widens.

“Is that what you do?” Baze demands. “When you go to one of them? Show them twirling tricks?”

Chirrut taps his staff gently against the dirt of the courtyard. “Once, I suppose I did,” he concedes at last. “She hardly needed the help, though. She already understood the basic precepts of staff combat. I only gave her a few of my personal favorite moves. Of course, at the time I simply thought it was a dream and she knew  _dantougu_ style because I did.”

Baze sighs. “The boy,” he says, “the quiet one with the - ” he makes a sharp gesture with his hand, leveling his palm up high over his head and growling a bit.

“The tall, cranky droid?”

“Mm. Him. Last time I… _met_  him,” Baze pauses and shakes his head at the weak word choice for the insanity of finding his self suddenly across the universe, but he really cannot think of a better term to describe something he’s never heard of before. “He was in a shoot-out. Low ammo, not yet pinned down but getting backed into a corner. Dust storm gunked his targeting scope and visibility.”

“And you popped in and saved the day, of course.”

Baze gives the acolyte a significant glare, and she stops edging closer and stays respectfully out of hearing range. If she comes over here and asks ‘Master Chirrut’ to teach her the secrets of the Force, Chirrut will be _unbearably_ cheerful about it for days. “I just taught him how to angle off the building’s glare,” he says at last. “Don’t know what his teachers are doing, letting a boy like that run into firefights without knowing how to use his environment.”

“Don't know what his teachers are doing, letting a boy that young run into firefights," Chirrut murmurs, but Baze does not respond. They both already know the ugly answer to that question. The Empire is far away, and has no use for a little planet in the Outer Rim that still keeps to old traditions. But there are those who struggle under it’s heavy heel every day, and Baze admires how some of them refuse to bow their heads. He only wishes they would leave the very young out of it. The chattering boy seems well enough safe from it, but both the quiet boy and the girl seem to constantly be diving for trenches or staunching blood with their small hands. The girl, he thinks, is not even yet considered an adult in Core worlds, and neither of them are full grown by Jedhan standards. They should have parents to love and protect them, elders to shepherd them to safer places, teachers to guide them through the pitfalls of anger and bitterness and loss until they learn to control those darker impulses.

“What they need,” Chirrut says into the gentle peace of the courtyard of the great Temple of Kyber, and Baze knows what’s coming by the sly stretch of Chirrut’s smile, “are guardians.”

“Lazy joke,” Baze tells him pointedly.

Another thoughtful tap of the staff end against the dirt, and then Chirrut spins it again around his wrist, so pleased with himself already that he does not even hear the acolyte quietly applaud. “But a true one.”

Baze shakes his head and grabs the staff, his fingers conveniently wrapping around Chirrut’s hand as he does. “You figured out how to meet them on purpose yet?”

Chirrut’s smile wanes but his confidence does not. “Soon,” he promises. “We shall.” 

 

* * *

 

Jyn doesn’t have time for hallucinations. She’s been on her own for a year now, and it’s only this last month that she’s finally gone more than ten standard days without feeling the vicious pinch of hunger in her belly and the headache of dehydration and nausea that always accompany the early stages of starvation. She’s made it almost two weeks now without panic rising like bile in her throat as she realizes that she has nothing to eat and no options to get food that don’t involve the risk of capture or death. But though this job promises to put enough credits in her pocket to make it through at least two or three months, it’s not easy work. 

So she bites down on the inside of her cheek and narrows her eyes until all she can see is the code of the forged scandoc in front of her. She’s almost got this one done, and about five more to go before the crime boss on this planet will pay her the rest of her fee. She does not have time for the guy standing in the corner, watching her hands with interest. He’s not really there anyway. Just like the shaggy guy with the gun or the sleek guy with the staff or the polite guy with the red sash are never really there. (She has no idea why her brain only seems to manifest her problems as Human males, although on her more bitter days she pretends to know.)

“Takodana doesn’t use that registry anymore,” the guy breaks the silence suddenly, his voice low and accented by some unfamiliar planet. Jyn bites down on her cheek until she tastes blood and doesn’t look up, doesn’t acknowledge the person who can’t possibly be there. She’s alone in the little room that she’s paying an outrageous amount for above the old droid shop. He’s not really here, because if some strange guy popped out of nowhere in the shadows and started critiquing her work, she’d put a blaster bolt through his head. But last time she tried that, all she got for her trouble was a smoking blaster hole in the bulkhead and a lot of angry grav-bus passengers. Jyn’s logic is thus: she’s a good shot, but she can’t shoot  _him_ , so he isn’t really there. Every time she’s seen him, she’s just been….dreaming of someone who doesn’t attack her on sight. Hallucinating the faint smile he gives her when she cracks an irate joke, imagining the soft music of his voice. Going crazy, that’s what it is, her mind fracturing under the crushing weight of survival. Jyn is alone in the room, that’s all there is to it.

“Maz Kanata dropped her tavern out of that registry,” the guy says again, a little more urgently, and steps closer.

Or rather, he doesn’t, because he’s  _not there_. Jyn is alone. She’s just got a really, really obnoxious imagination.

“And since her tavern makes up most of the planet’s revenue, it wasn’t worth it for the Takodana government to pay the fees to stay in, either,” the guy does  _not_ tell her, his voice still quiet but now turning just a little bit exasperated. As if he has any right to judge her for not listening, when he doesn’t even exist.

“If you use that scandoc,” Not Really There But Definitely Really Annoying continues, stepping yet closer, “you’re going to get caught.”

“I’m not going to use it myself,” Jyn snaps, sitting up and glaring at him (glaring at the spot where he would be, if he were real and present, which he isn’t). “I’m going to sell it, and then get the hells out of here with my creds before Huan Miu nags me for more work than he’s willing to pay for.”

“Huan Miu?” The guy blinks at her, a frown creasing his face. “The crime boss from Ryloth? He’s going to Takodana? Why?”

Jyn’s stomach does a strange flip. Why doesn’t he know that? He’s  _her,_  albeit some weird, distorted version of her own mind. Really weird. She’s never even seen anyone who looks like him; if he’s some manifestation of her past trauma or a ghost of someone she’s killed in the war like the shrinks on the holonet say, why doesn’t he look familiar? “Next time,” she tells him flatly, “You should grow your hair out and put it in a tail.”

The Guy Who Isn’t raises a dark eyebrow, the concerned frown vanishing into a younger, more uncertain kind of confusion. He reaches up to run a hand through his short dark hair, and for the first time, Jyn thinks he might actually be somewhere near her own age. Only just barely an adult, still young enough to be awkward when thrown off his game. “What?”

“That, or shave your head completely,” she shrugs at him. Her first father had long hair that he wore in a tail. She’s heard through…sources that Saw is letting his hair grow again, but she only ever knew him to be hairless (heartless) and –

(no, that’s not right, if he’d been heartless all along then  _her_ heart wouldn’t hurt so much but, _shit, Jyn, just forget about it)_

“I can’t shave my head,” the guy says. “It wouldn’t fit Sward.” Jyn opens her mouth to demand  _who the hells is Sward?_ – but he cuts her off. “Don’t put that registry on the scandocs. Huan Miu will hunt you down if your product causes him any trouble. He’s been getting into slave-running lately, and he’ll put a buzzcollar on your neck and sell you to the highest bidder.”

“Huan Miu runs arms to wealthy arseholes in the Mid Rim,” Jyn snorts. “Even if he did get into slaves, those are the kind of rich pervs who want pretty young things to hang on their elbow. No one wants a scarred up gutter rat like me.”

He looks at her for a long moment, and Jyn stares back because she doesn’t know how else to handle the sensation of being… _looked at_  like that. Well, she does know, but again, shooting at him won’t do anything helpful. He’s not really there, after all. Jyn’s alone in this cold, dusty, cramped little room that smells like old oil and rusting metal.

“Don’t use that registry,” he says slowly. “And don’t deliver the product to Huan Miu in person. Please.”

Jyn’s heart clenches, and it’s only distantly that she notes the panic bubbling up in her chest is nothing like the usual terror that surges in her throat. The last time someone said _please_ to the nobody that was born Jyn Erso, the last time someone asked her to do something that was meant to keep her safe, she found herself alone and starving in a hole.  _Again._

Jyn throws her vibroblade at him. It embeds itself in the wall, quivering only slightly less than her cold hands. The guy is gone, because of course he is. He was never really there anyway, in this empty room where she huddles over her work. Jyn tucks her icy fingers under her armpits and closes her eyes, and tells herself she’s glad for it. She’s glad she’s not hallucinating anymore. She doesn’t need to pretend that someone in the galaxy cares about her. She knows better. Jyn’s alone, and she prefers it that way.

She leaves the registry off the scandocs, sends her finished work to Huan Miu with a short-lock virus embedded in the documents that warns him he has two hours to pay her, or the virus will eat all his files and then set his console on fire. The money comes through in thirty minutes, and Jyn gets the hell off that planet an hour later. A few days after she hops the system, she finds a cancelled bill of sale in Huan Miu’s ‘catalogue,’ with a grainy image of Jyn’s face stolen from some security camera or other. The buyer had been compensated for the failure to deliver.

Jyn transfers all the credits from that job through five shell accounts before she feels safe enough to use any of it, and sleeps with her vibroblade in her hand for the next week. If she let herself think about it, she might be a little bit grateful. Her mind might be warped beyond repair, but at least her hallucinations aren’t totally useless.

Still, better to keep him out of her head. Better to be alone.

 

* * *

 

Bodhi doesn’t really like his run between Naboo and Jedha, despite the good pay. Naboo is a really pretty planet, and he imagines it’s nice enough for those born to it. But the air is full of strange smells that make his nose itch and taste a bit rotten on his tongue. Naboo, he learns, has almost fifty thousand species of flowers in the capital city alone, lots of festivals that involve cutting and arranging bouquets, and a tendency to just throw the dying flowers into massive compost piles in the countryside when they are done with them. So technically, something is always rotting in the air around the famous planet’s most beloved city. He learns not to voice that thought out loud on his first trip there.

The dock workers are friendly enough as they unload his shuttle, and when there’s some sort of administrative hold up and all cargo ships are put on a freeze while the office workers chatter and scold and run around with datapads on the catwalks above them, the pilots and the dockworkers hunker down on the dock floors and indulge in some sociable sabaac. Bodhi sees a few disgruntled faces when he scoops up a big pile of winnings, but mostly the grumbles are good natured. “Our Ensign Rook,” Yancy crows, another pilot assigned the Jedha-Naboo run around the same time as Bodhi. He laughs like a dying bird and smells like Jedhan spice. “He’s a skinny  _grek_ , but he knows how to call the cards! Show ‘em how a Jedhan gets it done, brother!”

Bodhi grins and lays down a complete Royal Hutt. The rest of the table groans. Yancy squawks his scratchy laugh as Bodhi cleans up the betting pile again.

The bad shit doesn’t happen until almost three hours after the whole dock shuts down for paperwork problems, and Bodhi’s feeling pretty good about the stack of credits and ident cards and cheap but useful nicknacks he’s acquiring by his elbow. There’s no booze, and Bodhi wouldn’t indulge if there were (Mum may be far away, but no amount of fermented plant juice will ever be worth her disappointment). He’s still feeling a bit flushed anyway, and maybe a little cocky with his success. He has a job now, a steady one, and the grey jumpsuit he wears is clean and not really even that scratchy. He’s got enough in his winnings pile to maybe pick up something nice for Mum from the Naboo shops, and since Temple offerings are now forbidden, he could use the leftover bit to maybe buy some new flight goggles. Maybe even a good pair of flight gloves!

So his head is full of rosy pictures of goggles and gloves and the chance his Mum will finally smile again (it’s been almost two years since the Imperials invaded Jedha, he’s starting to worry), and he’s not thinking at all when he opens his mouth and comments on the rot in the air all around the city.

Their corner of the docks goes silent immediately, and Bodhi blinks at the sudden change. Several seconds too late, he realizes that every face around him, save Yancy, looks much more Core-world-esque than his own. Every face save Yancy’s is turned toward him, the friendly smiles and good natured scowls gone.

“You think you’re any better, Jedha?” One of the dock workers snarls. The worker jabs a grease-covered finger at Bodhi’s left shoulder, at the still pristine white crest stamped into the cheap grey cloth. “Think you’re better than us when you wear  _that_  on  _your_  sleeve?”

“Apologies,” Bodhi says quickly, putting his hands up, “I didn’t mean the planet was rotten, I just meant - ” His words stutter slightly, he finds himself speaking faster as the dock workers rise to their feet around him. Funny, he hadn’t noticed before just how burly they all are. The Imperial docks seem to prefer larger sentients for their workers around here. “It’s just the flowers,” he starts again, pushing up from his chair and shuffling backwards, suppressing a little twinge of jittery unease as the workers move closer, glaring. “They make the air taste rotten.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and he knows it before the words are even completely out of his mouth. The unease starts to shiver into real fear at the anger all around him, and part of Bodhi is baffled. Naboo has been Imperial since the beginning, everyone knows that. Even if he was making some kind of dig at how easily they capitulated to the command of the Emperor, why would they even be upset about it? It’s all old news, right? The Empire isn’t even that bad, as long as people get on with their lives and don’t break the laws.

“You think we’re like that, Jedha?” Another worker asks in a dark voice. “You think we roll in rot because  _he’s_  from here?”

Bodhi holds up his hands. “I think something’s getting lost in translation here,” he says a little helplessly, glancing up at the catwalks above and wondering why none of the security folks up there are reacting to the obvious brewing fight. To his left, Yancy is still sitting quietly, staring at his feet. Bodhi wonders briefly whatever happened to  _brother_ , but then the dock worker nearest him lunges forward and wraps a muscled arm around Bodhi’s neck.

“Think we like it, Imperial, having to bow to your kind?” The man’s voice is harsh in Bodhi’s ear, his breath heavy with an unfamiliar sweet smell, but Bodhi only has a moment to register either before the worker clamps down and Bodhi chokes as his air cuts off. He flails against the arm, feels his elbow make glancing contact with something fleshy, but the iron band around his throat doesn’t ease and dimly he becomes aware that someone else is moving toward him, fist angling for his face and all he can do is scrabble weakly at the arm and stare in horror -

“Hey,” a female voice says from somewhere to his left. “ _Fuck_  you.”

And then Bodhi shifts his weight. Or rather, his body decides to shift his weight, because  _all the stars as his witness,_  he doesn’t do a damn thing. His feet simply move underneath him, his weight rebalances, his knees bend slightly, and his elbow goes flying back and slightly up, connecting solidly with something hard. A rush of overly-sweet breath as the man holding him in a headlock gasps and loosens his grip. Bodhi’s body shifts backward, throwing all his weight against the staggered dock worker, and his legs lash out as he balances on the throttler, his heels thudding into the oncoming attacker’s gut. The move shoves the throttler back even further, and Bodhi’s shoulders twist, wrenching him free from the chokehold. His feet keep moving, dancing closer to the circle of dock workers who are now looking much less aggressive as Bodhi grabs the man who meant to punch him and slams his knee up into the other’s face. Another attacker runs up behind Bodhi ( _how does he know that? He shouldn’t know that!_ ), so he spins, his fist flying, and the blow sends the new attacker flat on his back with thick blood spurting from his obviously broken nose.

Another attacker on the right, and Bodhi’s arms move faster than he can even comprehend, catching the man’s wrist and slamming up against his joints. A loud cracking noise and a scream from the worker, and Bodhi’s hands grip the man’s worn shirt and fling him brutally away. Someone shouts behind him, and Bodhi drops, his leg sweeps out in a move he knows from action holos but he’s never actually seen done in reality. He feels his shin connect, twice, and two more hulking dock workers crash to the floor in a pile of limbs and curses. Bodhi finds himself on his feet again, standing in a ring of half a dozen bleeding, wheezing, groaning people, with a split knuckle and a pounding heart.

Across from him, Yancy sits frozen in his chair, staring.

“Hutt fuckers,” the woman says from Bodhi’s side, and if it were possible for Bodhi to be anymore shocked than he already is, he might have yelped. She eyes the downed dock workers for a second, and then turns to face him, a few strands of dark hair fluttering into her green eyes. She gives Bodhi a long look, her chin tilted up and her eyes assessing. “You ditched the red sash,” she says, pointing to his waist.

“Not allowed on Jedha anymore,” he replies automatically, and then blinks. Wait. How does she know he used to wear the acolyte’s sash? She definitely isn’t Jedhan, she can’t know…no, wait, yes, he does recognize her. He’s…seen her, right? In the crowds at Jedha Port? Or…somewhere like that. What’s she doing on Naboo? What’s she doing  _here?_  “You… you had a braid in your hair. Didn’t you?”

Her face turns from wary to grim, and Bodhi instantly regrets the question. He doesn’t know why it hurt her, doesn’t know why he even asked. It hardly matters. He’s got so many other problems right now. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“Rook?” Yancy asks in a quavering voice. “Are you, uh, in there?”

The oddness of the question, and the careful way Yancy asks it, makes Bodhi’s head snap up. “Yeah?” He clears his throat, looks down at the workers on the floor. “I…I think so?”

“I like the goggles,” the woman says.  Bodhi turns to look back at her.

She’s gone.

He spins in a circle, because he’s out in more or less the middle of the docks where he can see all around himself for several meters in every direction until a ship blocks his line of sight, but she’s  _gone_.

“Rook?” Yancy shuffles back. He seems about to say something more, but then he glances down at the workers and an odd, pinched look crosses his face.

The woman is gone, vanished into the aether, and Bodhi’s knuckles are bloody from a fight he swears he didn’t, well, actually  _fight._

“What,” Bodhi asks aloud, his voice hoarse and his neck sore from the throttler’s hold, “the  _Force_  just happened?”

“Ensign Rook,” a sharp, heavily accented voice answers. The sharp consonants and edged vowels make Bodhi’s stomach flip over, and he whirls around.

“Ensign Rook,” the Chief of Security says again, ignoring the dock workers scrambling off the floor and slinking away into the rest of the now-silent facility. “Regulations forbid the use of inappropriate language in a professional setting. “You will receive twenty demerits and a permanent mark on your record.” The Chief of Security raises a datapad and makes a sharp note on his screen. “As such, you will be docked a day’s pay per demerit.” Behind him, two Stormtroopers watch Bodhi with cocked rifles and empty black stares.

“I – “ Bodhi starts to protest, but a hand on his shoulder stops him.

“Don’t,” the tall man says, his warm, rounded accent a stark contrast to the Security Chief’s cold edge. “He watched you fighting the others. He called the Stormtroopers over before he came down.” The stranger looks at the Security Chief with the sort of disdain Bodhi usually reserves for slimy mold on his food or badly programmed hyperspace trajectories. “He wants you to argue so he can tell the ‘troopers to shoot and later claim you were exhibiting aggressive behavior.”

Bodhi clamps his mouth shut.

The Security Chief doesn’t look up from his datapad for a long moment, and the rot that Bodhi tasted on the air before suddenly seems to condense around his head, smothering him.

With a snap, the Security Chief closes his datapad and clips it to his belt. “You will also be reassigned,” he says flatly. “You are clearly unsuited to Core world runs. Your new route will be adjusted accordingly.”

Bodhi’s stomach drops; the Naboo run wasn’t ever going to make him wealthy, but it was one of the best paying routes, and the only one available to someone with his flight scores that had a chance of paying off Mum’s medical debt.

“See his jaw?” the stranger with his hand on Bodhi’s shoulder says calmly. “He’s disappointed. He’s a bully,” the man adds in a harsh, unpleasant voice. Bodhi gasps, glancing from the stranger’s narrowed eyes to the Security Chief’s back, but the Imperial doesn’t turn around, doesn’t seem to hear the stranger’s provocative comments. “He can’t knock the workers around here too much because they will complain to their Senator,” the stranger continues as the Stormtroopers wheel around smartly and march after their superior. “But you are from an unrepresented planet, and you fought off a bunch of bigger, stronger people. He’s looking for a chance to crush you, so he can sound like a hero later. Just let him go.”

Bodhi stands, frozen, until the Security Chief and the ‘troopers disappear up the catwalks and into the offices again. The dock where his cargo ship sits seems to have cleared completely, even Yancy vanishing into the shadows of Naboo’s evening. Bodhi swallows and clenches his bleeding hand tightly. “I didn’t fight them,” he tells the stranger. “I don’t fight people. It’s not – My mum taught me it was – I don’t know what - ” He falls silent, his usual ability to talk himself out of trouble utterly deserting him. He opens and closes his fist a few more times, appreciating that at least everything seems to be under his control again. For now.

On his shoulder, the stranger’s hand tightens, a comforting gesture. Bodhi doesn’t look back at him again, though. Maybe it’s better not to look. Who knows what he will see?

“It was the woman, I think,” he says abruptly. “The fight. It was her.”

“The woman,” the stranger repeats, and then, “short, dark hair, fierce eyes?”

“Uh,” Bodhi almost turns around then, but stops himself. “Green eyes,” he corrects carefully. “You know her?”

“We’ve met,” the stranger says absently. “Did it feel like you were no longer wholly alone within yourself, following another’s lead within your own skin?”

“Not…quite?” Bodhi reaches up his bloody hand and rubs his throat gingerly. “More like someone else was, um, moving me. Like a puppet in a street show. Wait – did she grab  _your_ body, too?”

A pause, a small sound like a man clearing his throat. “No,” The stranger’s hand drops from his shoulder. “One of the older men...helped me. But it felt more like guidance than control. Perhaps  _she_ hasn’t learned that kind of finesse yet.” The last sentence comes out thoughtful, more like the stranger is speaking to himself than to Bodhi.

Bodhi feels a little flare of hope. Surely an apparition would not speak to himself? That was the kind of thing a real person did, not an old-world demon from a Temple Tale or a figure from a fever-dream. The stranger must be real, and the Security Chief was just ignoring him for some reason. And if the stranger is real, then the woman was probably real too. He’s not hearing voices or anything.

Bodhi braces himself, and turns around.

He is standing alone in the dock by his cargo ship. The closest sentients to him are several meters away by the next ship, and not one of them makes eye contact with him at all. He doesn’t know if they avoid him because the Security Chief put an obvious target on his back, or because he just flattened six big men with his bare hands, or because he’s standing in the middle of the dock talking to himself like a mad man.

Bodhi shoves his hands in his pockets, curls his fingers tight around the trickle of blood between them, and walks back to his ship.

It doesn’t occur to him until several hours and two hyperspace jumps later that he left his winnings behind.

**Author's Note:**

>  _sharik_ = a made up word (based on the Arabic word for “life partner”) that doesn’t quite translate but means, more or less, “person with whom I walk the paths of life, bound in spirit through the energy of the Force and blessed by the universe.” Sharikesh = the plural, used to refer to all members of such a bond.
> 
> _dantougu_ = a word I made up by sliming the Chinese words _“dan tou gun”_ (“single end staff”) all together.
> 
> I forgot that when I initially tried to post this, AO3 kicked it back and then crashed, and then I never came back to put it up. Hoping to eventually throw a second chapter from Cassian and K2SO's POV on here, but haven't managed the time yet.


End file.
